Latest analysis – Page 55
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Features
Kay seeks corporate governance ‘settlement’
John Kay’s long-awaited final report on long-term decision making within the UK’s equity market did not offer many surprises. Many of the proposals had already been hinted at in February’s interim report, such as the abolition of quarterly reporting to aid companies in more long-term thinking.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Hedge fund concerns
Hedge funds have, without doubt, delivered ‘loadsamoney’, especially for their staff and their richest and smartest customers over the past few decades. And there is also no doubt that short-selling can send a useful signal to the market about hidden risks.
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Features
Tomorrow’s long-term capitalists
The UK equity market, as Prof John Kay rightly points out in his review ‘UK Markets and Long-term Decision Making’, is no longer majority-owned by UK pension funds and insurers, and has not been for a long time.
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Features
Latin lessons in sovereign default
Emerging market debt managers are brave souls. Take Thomas Brund of Sydinvest, one of the managers featured in this month’s strategy review, who deliberately bought the Ivory Coast before it defaulted. “We were happy to take that default to make sure that we were well-positioned for the upside,” he explains.
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Features
Breaking up is hard to do
In July, Dutch transport pension fund Vervoer sued its former fiduciary manager Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) for a number of breaches of contract, filing a €250m lawsuit in the UK High Court.
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Features
From our perspective: Armour-plating won’t do
Many criticisms of the quantitative impact study consultation of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) on its holistic balance sheet proposal focused on the exercise itself – that it is too complex and opaque, and only large pension funds have the resources to do it.
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Features
Taking the time to assess the risk
The latest consultation paper for the holistic balance sheet (HBS) within the revised IORP Directive has aroused great interest across Europe. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) gave the pensions industry until 1 August to submit its input on the controversial first quantitative impact study (QIS) for the implementation of the HBS.
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Features
The long haul
Speaking a little over 200 days into his tenure as EFRP secretary general, Matti Leppälä was a busy man. His secretariat was working on its response to the quantitative impact study of EIOPA (the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) on the holistic balance sheet proposal, and he was looking forward to the Brussels close season when the city’s politicians, officials and interest groups head for Europe’s holiday spots.
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Features
Making a virtue out of necessity
While investors have grown weary of new risks, they are unwilling to forego a bargain when they see it, according to Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Opinion Pieces
Peter Kraneveld, Secretary of the Association for European Retirement Education
“Supervision should be made responsible for pension quality, not just for solvency”
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Dog days
It is the end of August. Holidays are a distant memory, the leaves are wilting on the trees and the children are going back to school. The euro crisis isn’t getting any worse and markets have even rallied. Welcome to the dog days of summer.
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Features
Focus Group: Bad to the bone
Almost three-quarters of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey felt recent events, such as LIBOR-manipulation and mis-selling, point to major problems with the culture of banking.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Ins and outs of ‘flexileg’
In the old days, an international investment bank could study a Brussels Directive or Regulation and make plans.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: MAP-21 skirts IASB
Under the seemingly innocuous Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (or MAP-21 for short), new accounting rules have been approved in the US that will affect their private pension funds. But will it be for better or for worse?
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AnalysisNews analysis: Spezialfonds ain't broke, but let's fix them anyway
GERMANY – New proposals could exclude German insurers from domestic real estate market.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Starting in their back yards
Foundations often exist to do public good. Their mission should be both to invest and provide grants. Protecting capital should be a priority; foundations do not need to be liability driven, have no reason to herd, and could use their long-term nature as a source of competitive advantage.
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Features
Alarm call
Persistently low rates are taking their toll on pension funding levels throughout Europe. Now they have forced authorities in three European countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden – to act to shore up pension funding, to allow providers to meet their guarantees, or to avoid benefit cuts.
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Features
Have bond markets become myopic?
In this month’s commodities report we address two phenomena – the slowdown and transition of China’s economy, and the US shale gas revolution – that could profoundly change our entire macroeconomic framework.
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Features
Long live the deal...
The Dutch pension deal, as such, is off the table. But despite all the political turmoil, a working group representing experts, government, supervisors and various stakeholders has continued to hammer out the details of the new system, resulting in the long-awaited outline presented on 30 May. The pension deal is dead. Long live the pension deal.
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Features
Looking to IORP III?
The European Commission’s decision to postpone to summer 2013 its white paper on the IORP II Directive represents yet another delay in a highly protracted process that has to balance the need for reform of the first IORP Directive, the interests of occupational pensions and the insurance industry, as well as the Commission’s desire, as a lead global initiator of financial services legislation, to test the limits of its competence in harmonising EU laws.
